March of Robots 2016

For the entire month of March, I participated in the March of Robots sketch challenge: drawing at least one robot every day for 31 days, and posting the results to Instagram. It was a fun exercise, and my main goal was to explore different styles (both analog and digital), and really just try and generate work at a regular pace. I think I came up with a fairly diverse set of robots, and it was very cool seeing what other artists came up with. Tons of creativity and skill out there!

Here's a sampling of the some 40-plus illustrations I let loose upon the world:

The #marchofrobots has begun!  #sketchbook #sketchchallenge #robots #drawing #illustration #marchofrobots2016

A photo posted by Ben Nuñez (@benerator) on Mar 1, 2016 at 8:35am PST

"Brute_01" #marchofrobots #marchofrobots2016 #autodesksketchbook #galaxynote2 #illustration #robots

A photo posted by Ben Nuñez (@benerator) on Mar 4, 2016 at 4:41pm PST

"Smoke Break" #marchofrobots #marchofrobots2016 #autodesksketchbook #galaxynote2 #wacom #bamboostylusfeel #drawing #mech #mecha

A photo posted by Ben Nuñez (@benerator) on Mar 5, 2016 at 2:38pm PST

"Deep Dive" #marchofrobots #marchofrobots2016 #autodesksketchbook #galaxynote2 #wacom #bamboostylusfeel #digitalpainting #robots

A photo posted by Ben Nuñez (@benerator) on Mar 8, 2016 at 8:58pm PST

"Rest Stop" #marchofrobots #marchofrobots2016 #AutodeskSketchbook #galaxynote2 #wacom #bamboostylusfeel #drawing #robots

A photo posted by Ben Nuñez (@benerator) on Mar 14, 2016 at 7:48pm PDT

"Stroll" #marchofrobots #marchofrobots2016 #autodesksketchbook #galaxynote2 #wacom #bamboostylusfeel #robots

A photo posted by Ben Nuñez (@benerator) on Mar 17, 2016 at 8:16pm PDT

"B-Gundam" (My own attempt at a Gundam-ish mecha) #marchofrobots #marchofrobots2016 #autodesksketchbook #galaxynote2 #wacom #bamboostylusfeel #robots #mech #mecha #gundam

A photo posted by Ben Nuñez (@benerator) on Mar 18, 2016 at 2:13pm PDT

"Contemplation" #marchofrobots #marchofrobots2016 #AutodeskSketchbook #galaxynote2 #wacom #bamboostylusfeel #digitalpainting #robots

A photo posted by Ben Nuñez (@benerator) on Mar 23, 2016 at 9:54pm PDT

"Robo sketchy sketches II: The Quickening" #marchofrobots #marchofrobots2016 #sketchbook #drawing #robots

A photo posted by Ben Nuñez (@benerator) on Mar 26, 2016 at 6:50am PDT

"MetroPol" #marchofrobots #marchofrobots2016 #autodesksketchbook #galaxynote2 #wacom #bamboostylusfeel #illustration #mech #robots

A photo posted by Ben Nuñez (@benerator) on Mar 28, 2016 at 6:46pm PDT

"Space Giants" #marchofrobots #marchofrobots2016 #autodesksketchbook #galaxynote2 #wacom #bamboostylusfeel #illustration #robots #tbt #throwbackthursday #spacegiants #magmataishi

A photo posted by Ben Nuñez (@benerator) on Mar 31, 2016 at 1:52pm PDT

Glare

Haven't done a painterly robot in a while, decided to revisit an old doodle in Sketchbook on the Galaxy Note 8, playing around with the smudge tool and layer blending modes. Lots of happy accidents with this one, I learned a few things about manipulating pixels, so all in all I'd say it was a successful exercise.

Nifty

Took a robot painting I did in Colors! into Photoshop and slapped a texture layer on it just for grins, and I think it turned out really nice:



Gives it a watercolor/gouache-y feel. Definitely something I need to play with more...

btw, the texture came from here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bittbox/ / CC BY 2.0

Panel test

Been experimenting with the idea of using Colors! to paint comic strip panels, found that doing characters with detailed backgrounds might not be practical, for the most part. Ended up sketching the character and background separate and then composited them in Photoshop, seems to work fine. Also added a texture overlay to the background to rough it up a little...